IMG MGMT

These images are pulled from my personal database of thousands of saved jpgs, gifs and video clips from Internet memes, pop culture, and art history, collected over a ten-year period. Deceased saints and celebrities, horror movie victims and victims of plague, pop culture monsters and cartoon characters form a cast of silly and somber subjects who cameo in my large-scale community reenactments of art history.

Turkish media fetishizes stories of sexual abuse, and that sensation is drummed up by manipulating imagery of victims, obscuring their faces with pixels and the black censorship band. Found covering the eyes of women, animals and even objects under sensational news headlines, the band creates an aura of authenticity around the spectacle of sexual violation, and even conjures shame.

Imagery of atomic test sites loomed large in public consciousness during the 1960s and 70s, when weekly atomic tests made front page news in the New York Times and in Life magazine. During the Cold War, the US detonated detonated over 80 devices between 10kt and 1200 kt each, for a total explosive yield of around ~50,000,000 tons: an overabundant earthmoving that happened to coincide precisely with the birth of Land Art.

I keep a folder of images on my desktop, culled from internet searches and random meanderings around the net. There isn’t much curation involved in these images, and I’m not always sure why an image calls to my collection, but themes arise nonetheless. A unifying quality is the bleak reality that’s laid bare by the breakdown of a system– bygone expressions of power like Brutalist architecture, panopticons, and military camouflage. I feel ambivalent about these images, uncomfortable with taking pleasure in the aesthetic forms that hides insidious subtexts.

Collage is one of my many talents, though I don’t use it. All of the images you see here were taken by professional photographers in order to promote my performance work. I hope you enjoy this portfolio, documenting my illustrious career as rubberband-bodied mind janitor.

In a previous interview, I spoke with former U.S. Attorney General and longtime human rights activist Ramsey Clark about JFK’s assignation and wake, as well the current presidential election. In this conversation, Clark offers why he’s chosen to defend people who are largely considered evil, including Saddam Hussein. We talked in depth about why we try to understand these people.

In 2007, at a time of war, I wanted to understand how my creative output connected to global conflicts. I believe that, at the center of everything are people, so I started by researching the individuals behind them in order to better understand the rationale behind mass violence. I started researching their lives, I wrote songs about them, and I stared at them for a very long time, making little figurines.

It turned out that someone else had been exploring the topic for decades: former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who went on to defend some of the most notorious war criminals of the late 20th century, including Saddam Hussein. In this first interview Clark shares several personal stories that give shape to Clark’s personal ideologies, including a a vivid memory of Kennedy’s wake during his time in the Department of Justice under Kennedy and Johnson.

Really when you think about it, artists like me are a lot like inventors; we bring new ideas to life that change the world. But world-changing inventors, both good and evil, are currently at war. Big mean tech companies like Google, Apple and Samsung are being granted hundreds of patents that encroach upon the free spirit of the altruistic artist. At risk: the future of self expression. Now more than ever, the world needs us all to be inventors.

I find his work annoying and frustrating, the presentation simple and slight. The ultimate aim is to misinform the already mindless—yet I love every one of these objects. I shouldn’t, but I do. To me, they represent the confusion and insanity of life, and give me hope that anyone’s misguided psychology can have something redeeming. I see a reflection of myself in Klaus.